


akrasia

by waveridden



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, The Shelled One's Pods (Blaseball Team)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveridden/pseuds/waveridden
Summary: “You don’t think they deserve to know?"Jessica barks out a laugh. “Deserve,” she repeats.
Relationships: Patel Beyonce & Jessica Telephone
Comments: 13
Kudos: 25





	akrasia

**Author's Note:**

> I'm bandwagoning! This fic is 12 scenes, 100 words each, originally inspired by [Lewis Atilio's stunning short fiction,](https://pigeonize.medium.com/) and brought to Blaseball by @crookedsaint. Mine is also non-linear, because if I don't write a non-linear piece once every twelve months I WILL die, so scene numbers matter at least a little bit. Thanks and love to Tam @marquis, for peer pressuring me into actually posting the damn thing.
> 
> CW for mentions of incineration/family death, although it's nongraphic.

7.

Kansas City smells fresh. Not in a minty way: it’s floral, grassy, almost sweet. More importantly, it doesn’t smell like the stale peanut where she’s been living for years, the shell that’s in splinters around her on the field.

The Breath Mints are all staring at her. She’s not surprised to see that she’s wearing a Mints jersey. The Dial Tone is at her hip. She wraps her hand around it, trying to ground herself.

“Hi,” Jessica Telephone says. “Does anyone have a spare hairbrush? I haven’t seen a mirror in a while.”

Nobody laughs. She should’ve seen that coming.

  
  


6.

They weren’t supposed to lose.

It’s all she can think, watching the home run sailing away into the sky. She can see her teammates thinking the same thing. The Pods were supposed to win this game. It was supposed to be a glorious era. It was supposed to be something better.

The Shelled One cracks with the force of the ball. Jessica doesn’t have time to open her mouth or scream or cry before her pod is rising up around her, locking her in again, warm and dry and stale. At least this way nobody hears when she starts sobbing.

  
  


8.

“The other pitchers won’t talk to me about it,” Patel says. They sound confused, disappointed. Betrayed. “They all think we should move on.”

Jessica hasn’t talked to anyone about it. Not the Pies or Tigers, and sure as hell not the Mints. She hasn’t talked to any of the Pods, either, but there’s no avoiding Patel. He needs this, more than she doesn’t.

“Do you want to move on?” she asks, carefully.

Patel’s mouth thins. “Move on to what?”

She thinks about the season and then the siesta, a yawning chasm of inactivity. “Something better,” she mutters, and they snort.

  
  


9.

She shouldn’t be surprised that the Moist Talkers steer York away from her after every game, but it stings anyways. She tries to catch his eye, but he won’t look at her.

A question she asks herself, despite her better judgment: what did he tell them?

The games against the Talkers are… fine. She’s starting to feel less like Jessica Telephone, Legendary Batter, and a little more like Jess. She doesn’t like it. There are too many parts of her left unarmored and vulnerable. She wishes she had something to protect her, some kind of—

Well. Some kind of shell.

  
  


4.

Sebastian dies.

Jessica didn’t watch the video of the first time. She was playing when it happened, she didn’t watch, she doesn’t want to watch. But this time it happens in front of her.

It is a stranger and not her brother. This is what she repeats to herself as he screams and burns. Her brother is already gone, stolen by a decree years ago. She mourned the real Sebastian already, and mourned this one too. This is an old wound, one she can hide and hold close to her chest.

That doesn’t make it any easier to watch, though.

  
  


10.

The Mints are kind. Jessica tries not to hold it against them, but she misses the chance to be aloof, to skip team movie nights. 

But these days her social calendar is empty. Sebastian’s gone, she doesn’t want to see the Pies, the Pods don’t want to see her, and Patel is in Dallas. So she spends time with the Mints.

She completes metamorphosis back into personhood the day she wears her uniform cape for the first time. Nobody comments on it, but they all smile about it. A compromise.

They care about her, she realizes. Not Jessica Telephone.  _ Jess. _

  
  


5.

“Jess,” Landry says, “don’t do this.”

She’s at bat; he has to raise his voice to call out to her. Nobody questions why he bothers. She doesn’t look at him.

“Jess,” he repeats, more sharply. “This isn’t a regular game, nobody will judge you for walking away.”

She hits a triple — not ideal, but enough. She jogs the bases, mechanical, quicker than she wants to go and still not fast enough.

She slows as she passes shortstop. “I can’t stop,” she says, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and doesn’t look to see Landry’s face as he realizes.

  
  


2.

The first time Jessica emerged from the shell was to a cacophony of beak and feather, a flurry of noise that she had forgotten about. She had to relearn motion, and impatience, and her voice. She had to reshape herself to a world that trapped her.

The second time, she steps out and faces the Shoe Thieves. They are afraid. They are motionless. They are as she was, inside the shell. They are victims, or at least about to be. They are playing by her rules, whether they realize it or not.

It takes all her effort not to smile.

  
  


11.

Jessica never plays while Jaylen is pitching, and she’s grateful for that, because Jaylen doesn’t show up to games she doesn’t pitch. At least, she didn’t until partway through the season, when Jaylen starts attending Lovers games, sitting silently in the dugout.

She only finds Jessica once after a game. “They don’t know,” she says, not a question.

“You won’t tell them,” Jessica says.

“Why not?”

“They don’t want to know.”

“You don’t think they deserve to know?”

Jessica barks out a laugh. “Deserve,” she repeats.

Jaylen’s mouth twists. She inclines her head: point conceded. Blaseball isn’t about deserving anything.

  
  


3.

There is a moment, between the Crabs and the Hall Stars, where the Pods gather on the field together. It’s not quite a victory lap, because it’s not quite a victory. The Tacos are all standing together in a cluster. York has a hand on the Pitching Machine. Holloway is standing by Jessica, a familiar presence.

She says, “We can never tell them.”

Everyone averts their eyes. Nobody asks what she means, and nobody protests. They don’t have the time; they have one more game to play first.

“We can never tell them,” Jessica says again, and grabs her bat.

  
  


1.

“What can you give me?” Jessica asks the pod.

The answers come easily. Safety. Agency. Time to rest between games. A team that chose this, nobody trapped into anything. Everyone in a pod is here because of the fans. It’s time for them to push back. They all deserve something better.

Jessica has not felt secure since a decree stole her brother. Jessica has not felt secure since a blessing wormed into her bones and rewrote her as a goddess. At least this time, it’s a choice.

“Yes,” she says, and she could swear the pod around her gets warmer.

  
  


12.

Siesta looms in front of them, the monstrous shadow of nothingness.

“Do you have plans?” Patel asks. She can imagine him making exaggerated, teasing faces. Patel knows, of course, that Jess hates siestas, that an indefinite break is her worst nightmare. She could say that, and knows they wouldn’t judge her, but instead she chooses not to answer, letting the silence stretch out comfortably for a while..

Eventually he continues, voice distorted by phone static. “I think the break will be good. It’ll give us the time for—”

She can’t resist. “Something better?”

They cackle. “Yeah, Jess. Whatever you say.”

**Author's Note:**

> akrasia (n.) - a lack of self control; acting against one's better judgment
> 
> I'm @waveridden on Tumblr/Twitter, come say hi!


End file.
